CANDLES LIKE GEOLOGY TAKE TIME
In 2010 we saw the remarkable large candle placed as a center piece in the Inka Grill restaurant on the Plaza de Armas in Cusco, Peru. The scale of this amassed candle drippings in multiple hues made one think, now this is something not everybody has. How many candles did it take? How long did it take? Then return visits the same restaurant over the years led to similar admiration on the time commitment to craft such a large candle dripping tower.
Once we moved back to the USA from Chile we embarked on replicating the Inka Grill candle, by starting with a perch of a Casillero del Diablo bottle of Carménère wine. Below we post several pictures of the Cusco monument to wax, and our effort how it appears today after three years of intermittently keeping the flame going.
On a return trip to Cusco in 2014 I had asked a waiter in the Inka Grill how long their candle project was going for, he replied 12 years. Their candle is so massive that they have three sub-towers so that several candles burn at once. So yes, three years’ time is not enough to match their effort, which now has several ears of purple corn protruding from its flank. They keep the candle on a rustic wood table, with a toke colourful manta, and some bowls of local potatoes. Our candle forms a space occupying anchor on the left side of the kitchen island. While not as massive as the Cusco original, our candle project does get comments from visitors.
A really big candle like the one is Cusco is definitely a souvenir that tourist visiting Peru are not bringing home with them. T-shirts and alpaca sweaters weight less, and a candle monument is fragile.
We enjoy the candle for its geological scale relationships, taking many events to accrete, and the drips being somewhat reminiscent of lava drips on channel walls in Hawaii. As the same time it has developed overhangs with features like stalactites that slowly form in caves by dripping water. Another slow geological process is the precipitation of cave formations. Some of our wax stalactites have merged with the base, forming columns. Our wax tower develops slowly, but it is real time and one can watch individual drips search out their pathways past previous wax deposits. One can also watch lava flows with moving flow lobes adding to fill the gaps between older now solid cooled lava. Over many years lava fields patiently accumulate greater coiled and blocky masses. So maintaining a large candle tower has simultaneous analogies with volcanoes and caverns, the candles like geology take time.
Its nice making something that cannot be done in a day.
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